The Effect of Profitability and Leverage on Income Smoothing Moderated By Audit Quality (Case Study of Manufacturing Companies In Basic and Chemical Industry Sectors 2019-2022)

This study uses a quantitative method in the form of associative. The population in this study are manufacturing companies in the basic industry and chemical sectors listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange 2019-2022. The research period used is 4 years of observation, namely from 2019-2022. The sample was determined using the purposive sampling technique. Hypothesis testing in this study uses logistic regression. The results showed that profitability had no significant effect on income smoothing and leverage had a positive and significant effect on income smoothing. The results also show that audit quality is able to weaken the influence of profitability on income smoothing, and audit quality can weaken the influence of leverage on income smoothing. This result gives the implication that the higher the leverage, the higher the income smoothing carried out by the company. These results provide information that the high practice of profit equalization due to high profitability and high leverage will be further reduced if the company has a high audit quality.